John Curtis Holmes (August 8, 1944 – March 13, 1988), better known as John C. Holmes or Johnny Wadd (after the lead character he portrayed in a series of related films), was one of the most prolific male pornographic film actors of all time; he appeared in about 2,500 adult loops and pornographic feature movies in the 1970s and 1980s. Holmes was best known for his exceptionally large penis, which was heavily promoted as the longest, thickest, and hardest in the porn industry, although no documented measurement of Holmes' actual penis length, girth, or tumescence has ever been confirmed.[1]

Near the end of his life, Holmes attained notoriety for his involvement in the Wonderland murders of July 1981 and eventually for his death from complications caused by AIDS in March 1988.

Holmes was the subject of several books, a lengthy essay in Rolling Stone, and two feature-length documentaries, and was the inspiration for two Hollywood movies (Boogie Nights and Wonderland).

Holmes was born John Curtis Estes on August 8, 1944, in the small rural town of Ashville, Ohio, about 25 miles (40 km) south of Columbus. John was the youngest of four children born to 26-year-old Mary June Holmes (née Barton); his father's name was not listed on his birth certificate. Mary and her husband, Edward Holmes, the father of John's three older siblings, Dale, Edward, and Anne, were married and divorced three times throughout their lives, documented by wedding certificates dated 13 April 1936, 13 August 1945, and 12 September 1947.[2] At the time of their first marriage, in 1936, Edgar was 35 years old and already a one-time divorcé; Mary was 17.[3] After divorcing each other a third and final time, Edgar and Mary each married one more time.[4]

Mary changed John's surname to Holmes when he was a child. In 1986, when Holmes applied for a US passport for the first time prior to a trip to Italy, his mother provided him with the handwritten copy of his original birth certificate, Holmes learned the name of his biological father, Carl Estes.

Holmes' mother, Mary, was a devout Southern Baptist and with her children regularly attended the Millport Chapel Church; John had perfect attendance. In contrast his stepfather, Edward, was an alcoholic who would come home inebriated, stumble about the house, and even vomit on the children. As a child, Holmes enjoyed a reprieve from his turbulent home life when he visited his maternal grandparents.

Mary divorced Edward when Holmes was three or four and moved with her children to Columbus, Ohio, where they lived in a low-income apartment project with a friend of Mary's and her two children. The two women worked as clerks and waitresses in order to support their young children.

When Holmes was eight, his mother married Harold Bowman on December 31, 1951. Shortly afterward, Holmes and his family moved from Columbus and settled in the small town of Pataskala, Ohio, about 10 miles east of Columbus. Holmes recalled that Bowman was a good father until Holmes' younger half-brother, David, was born, at which point Bowman lost interest in his stepchildren and began neglecting them.[5][6]

Holmes left home at age 16 and enlisted in the U.S. Army, with his mother's written permission. He spent most of the three years of his military service in West Germany in the Signal Corps.[6] Upon his honorable discharge in 1963, Holmes moved to Los Angeles, where he worked in a variety of jobs, including selling goods door-to-door and tending the vats at a Coffee-Nips factory. During his stint as an ambulance driver he met a nurse named Sharon Gebenini, in December 1964. They married in August 1965 upon Holmes turning 21.[7]

In April 1965, Holmes found work as a forklift driver at a meatpacking warehouse in nearby Cudahy, California. However, repeated exposure to the sub-freezing air in the large walk-in freezer after being outside inhaling the desert-hot air caused him severe health problems, leading to a pneumothorax of his right lung, on three separate occasions, during the two years he worked there.[7]

Sharon had health problems, too. During the first 17 months of her marriage to John, she miscarried three times.[8]

Determining the number of films Holmes made during the early part of his career is difficult, because the ad copy rarely named him. Copy that did usually used entirely inconsistent names. For example, one early "Swedish Erotica" brochure from 1973 has five loops featuring Holmes, each citing a different name.[citation needed]

In 1971, Holmes' career began to take off with a porn series built around a private investigator named Johnny Wadd, written and directed by Bob Chinn. The success of the film Johnny Wadd created an immediate demand for more Johnny Wadd films, so Chinn followed up the same year with Flesh of the Lotus. Most of the subsequent Johnny Wadd films were written and directed by Chinn and produced by the L.A. based company Freeway Films.

By 1978, Holmes was reputed to be earning as much as $3,000 per day as a porn performer.[5][9] Around this time, his consumption of cocaine and freebasing were becoming an increasingly serious problem. Professionally, it affected his ability to maintain an erection, as is apparent from his flaccid performance in Insatiable (1980). To support himself and his drug habit, Holmes ventured into crime, selling drugs for gangs, prostituting himself to both men and women, and committing credit card fraud and various acts of petty theft.

In 1976, he met 15-year-old Dawn Schiller, who became his girlfriend. After Holmes became desperate for money, he forced her into prostitution and often beat her, which he did at least once in public.[10][11][12]

In the 1981 feature documentary, Exhausted, John C. Holmes, The Real Story made about his life and career by director and confidante, Julia St. Vincent, Holmes claimed during an interview segment that he'd had intercourse with 14,000 women.[9] The number had in fact been invented by Holmes to help salvage his waning image.[5] (Holmes later joked to psychologist Vonda L. Pelto, who had counselled Holmes in 1982 and other inmates during her employment at L.A. County jail, that he was exaggerating the number—which was actually 13,895.)

The true number of women (and men) with whom Holmes had sex during his career will never be known. After his death, his ex-wife Sharon came across a foot locker plated in 24k gold leaf, which contained photographic references to Holmes' "private work." She burned all of it.[13]

His performances included at least one homosexual feature film, The Private Pleasures of John C. Holmes,[14] and a handful of loops which contain rectal sex.

In late 1980, a mutual friend introduced Holmes to Chris Coxx, who owned the Odyssey nightclub. Coxx, in turn, introduced Holmes to Eddie Nash, a drug dealer who owned multiple nightclubs,[15] including Starwood. At the same time, Holmes was closely associated with the Wonderland Gang, a group of heroin-addicted cocaine dealers, so called for the location of their hangout: a rowhouse located on Wonderland Avenue in the wooded Laurel Canyon neighborhood of Los Angeles. Holmes frequently sold drugs for the gang.

After stealing money during a couple of drug runs[citation needed] as well as using more than his share of the gang's drugs,[16] Holmes was in trouble with the gang. In June 1981, allegedly in exchange for his life,[citation needed] he told the gang's leaders (Lind and Ron Launius) about a large stash of drugs, money, and jewelry Nash had in his house. Holmes helped to set up a robbery that was committed on the morning of June 29, 1981: a scenario that was represented in the films Boogie Nights and Wonderland.

Although Holmes was not present during the robbery, Nash apparently suspected Holmes had a part in it. After forcing Holmes to confess to his participation, and threatening his life and those of Holmes' family, Nash dispatched enforcers and Holmes to exact revenge against the Wonderland Gang. In the early hours of July 1, 1981, four of the gang's members were found murdered, and a fifth severely battered and near death, in their rowhouse. Holmes was allegedly present during the murders and left a left palm print (not "bloody" as L.A. media outlets covering the story erroneously reported) over one victim's headboard, but it is unclear whether or not he participated in the killings.

Holmes was questioned regarding the murders in July 1981 but released due to lack of evidence. He refused to cooperate with the investigation, and after spending nearly five months on the run with Dawn Schiller, Holmes was arrested in Florida on December 4, 1981, by former LAPD homicide detectives Tom Lange and Frank Tomlinson, and extradited to Los Angeles. In March 1982, Holmes was charged with personally committing all four murders. After a three-week, publicized trial, Holmes was acquitted on June 26, 1982 of all charges except contempt of court.[17] The Holmes Murder Trial was a landmark in American jurisprudence, as it was the first murder trial in America where videotape was introduced as evidence.[18]

After his release from L.A. County Jail for contempt of court in November 1982, Holmes quickly resumed his career in porn with a new generation of porn stars. His drug addiction continued off-and-on, and although work was still plentiful, it was no longer as lucrative as it had been, given the explosion in the use of cheaply made videotapes that saturated the porn market. Most of the feature porn films and videos he made during the 1980s were little more than cameo appearances.

In February 1986, five or six months after testing negative for the virus, Holmes was diagnosed as HIV positive. According to his second wife, Laurie Holmes, he claimed that he never used hypodermic needles and that he was deathly afraid of them. His first wife, Sharon Gebenini, and friend/former colleague, Bill Amerson, separately confirmed later that Holmes could not have contracted HIV from intravenous drug use, because he never used needles.[5]

During the summer of 1986, Holmes was offered a lucrative deal from Paradise Visuals, who were unaware he was HIV-positive, to travel to Italy to film (what were to be his last) two pornographic films. Holmes' penultimate film was The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empress (originally released in Italy as Carne Bollente) for director Riccardo Schicchi. The film starred Holmes, the later Italian Parliament member Ilona 'Cicciolina' Staller, Tracey Adams, Christoph Clark, and Amber Lynn.[19] His final film was The Devil In Mr. Holmes, starring Tracey Adams, Amber Lynn, Karin Schubert, and Marina Hedman.[20] These last films created a furor when it was revealed that Holmes had consciously chosen not to reveal his HIV status to his co-stars before engaging in unprotected sex for the filming.[19][21][22][23] Not wanting to reveal the true nature of his failing health, Holmes claimed to the press that he was suffering from colon cancer.[16]

Holmes married Laurie Rose on January 23, 1987 in Las Vegas, after confiding to her that he had AIDS.[24]

In 1975, he met Julia St. Vincent on the set of his film, Liquid Lips, which was being produced by her uncle, Armand Atamian. Holmes and St. Vincent remained close until 1981 and the Wonderland murders. St. Vincent produced the ersatz biographical film of Holmes' life, Exhausted (1981).[26]

In 1976, Holmes (then 32 years old) met, courted, and ultimately began a sexual relationship with 15-year-old Dawn Schiller.[27] After descending into severe drug abuse, he beat and prostituted the teen, who in December 1981, while they were in Florida fleeing law enforcement following the Wonderland murders, broke free and was persuaded by her brother Wayne to turn John in to the authorities. In her memoir, The Road Through Wonderland: Surviving John Holmes (2009), Schiller also describes her and her sister Terry's observations that John was a voyeur, who looked through their bungalow windows in Glendale, California as well as strangers' hotel room windows at the Biltmore, Palm Springs.[28]

In 1982, Holmes met his second wife, Laurie Rose; they married in January 1987,[29] which made Holmes stepfather to Rose's young son.[30]

Despite the notoriety and infamy associated with Holmes, he also devoted much time to charities involving the environment. He was involved with Greenpeace[31] and known to campaign and collect door-to-door for charities such as Save the Whales[29] and Save the Seals.[32]

Holmes' main asset in the porn business was his exceptionally large penis. No definitive measurement or documentation verifying his penis' length or girth exists, leaving its exact size unknown.

Veteran porn actress Dorothea "Seka" Patton has stated that Holmes' penis was the biggest in the industry.[34] Holmes' first wife recalled his claiming to be 10 inches (25.4 cm) when he first measured himself.[35] On another occasion, Holmes once claimed his penis was 16 inches (40.6 cm) long and 13 inches (33.0 cm) in circumference.[35] Holmes' long-time friend and industry associate, Bill Amerson, said, "I saw John measure himself several times; it was 13 and a half inches."(34.3 cm)[5] (In contrast, medical studies of human penis size have consistently found erections average between about 5 and 6 inches.[36][37][38])

At the height of his career, Holmes had his penis insured by Lloyd's of London for $14 million. Holmes reveled in claiming he was insured "for $1 million an inch."[39]

"So celebrated was Holmes’ penis size it was used as a marketing tool for films he wasn’t even in. Anybody but My Husband had the promotional tag line “Tony The Hook Perez has a dick so big that he gives even John Holmes a run for his money."[35]

Another controversy regards whether Holmes ever achieved a full erection, although much of his early work clearly reveals he was able to achieve a substantial erection. A popular joke in the 1970s porn industry held that Holmes was incapable of achieving a full erection because the blood flow from his head into his penis would cause him to pass out.[40] Annette Haven stated that his penis was never particularly hard during intercourse, likening it to "doing it with a big, soft kind-of loofah."[40]

"'How big is it?' fans would scream. 'Bigger than a payphone, smaller than a Cadillac' was my reply."[41]

After Holmes' death, the length of his penis continued to be used to market Holmes-related material. For example, at the premiere of the film Wonderland (2003), patrons were given 13 1/2-inch rulers as gag gifts.[42]

In 1979, Holmes with his younger half-brother, David Bowman, opened in Los Angeles a locksmith shop managed by Bowman and an attached used goods store called The Just Looking Emporium, named by Sharon Gebinini and managed by Dawn Schiller. However, because of Holmes' escalating drug addiction, which distracted him from buying inventory for the Emporium and siphoned its working capital, the Emporium "close[d] its doors forever by the end of September 1980".[29][43] According to Schiller, "David [kept] his part of the business open while John remove[d] our inventory and [sold] it all for coke."[44]

Later, after his 1982 murder trial and acquittal, Holmes began a business partnership with his friend, manager, and associate Bill Amerson; they founded and operated a production company named Penguin Productions, where Holmes could be a triple-threat: writing, directing, and performing.[29] Holmes appeared in seven of Penguin's 20 productions between 1985 and 1988. After requesting permission to use the name "Johnny Wadd" from his old director and friend, Bob Chinn, Holmes reprised the detective role for the Penguin Production:The Return of Johnny Wadd (1986).

Holmes' career was promoted with a series of outrageous claims that he made over the years (many made up on the spur of the moment by Holmes himself). The most dubious ones include:

Holmes' penis was so big that he had to stop wearing underwear because: "I was getting erections and snapping the elastic waist band four or five times a month."[45]

Holmes had degrees in physical therapy, medicine, and political science from UCLA.[46] (Holmes was in fact a high-school dropout who never returned to school; according to Bill Amerson, "the closest John ever got to UCLA was breaking into cars in the school's parking lot."[5])

Holmes and Ken Osmond, who played Eddie Haskell in the TV series Leave it to Beaver, were the same person. (In fact, the two men simply shared a passing resemblance.[47])

During the filming of a gay feature film, Holmes inadvertently killed two male performers and was tried for manslaughter. The judge in the case sentenced Holmes to abstain from performing anal sex in any future films. (In fact, this is an unproven urban myth.[48])